Statistics, Demographics, & Data Sets

What Is a Data Set and Why Do I Need One?

A data set is a grouping of data on a particular topic. Many academics gather their own, especially in the sciences. On occasion, however, it is more useful to analyze the data already gathered and provide new insights into a topic.

Data sets which have been gathered and curated by someone else have a couple of advantages: they've been gone over several times and the errors are likely to be reduced, they're likely to have been gathered in a consistent and competent manner, and they're likely to be available electronically.

FRED is an online database consisting of more than 156,000 economic data time series from 61 national, international, public, and private sources.

FRED, created and maintained by Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, goes far beyond simply providing data: It combines data with a powerful mix of tools that help the user understand, interact with, display, and disseminate the data.